Tag: chinese

The Michelin Guide launched in Singapore in mid-2016. The one big revelation in the guide that got everyone talking was the awarding of a Michelin star to an unassuming little hawker stall in Chinatown markets, Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle. Costing mere dollars for a plate of their signature soya sauce chicken, it’s quite possibly the cheapest Michelin-starred eatery in the world.

Since it won the Michelin star, its fame has spread far and wide. The small hawker stall in Chinatown markets can no longer handle the amount of traffic it receives, and sells out by 2pm in the afternoon.

That’s why we found ourselves heading to the brand-new sit-down restaurant opened as a larger branch of the hawker stall for a very late lunch one afternoon during our stay in Singapore. It’s still located in Chinatown, and is just opposite the markets so not too far from the original hawker stall.

The line is still long, but manageable. With sufficient seating and more than a dozen staff bussing tables, manning the till and preparing food in the kitchen, you’ll wait less than half an hour for a seat. Not bad!

Soya Sauce Chicken Noodle, $4.50SGD

The Soya Sauce Chicken is obviously the star of the show, and I can see why. The meat is ridiculously soft and tender, with the slightest hint of the soy braising. Where the soy is really highlighted is in the sauce which comes with the chicken no matter if you decide to have it served with rice, noodles or hor fun. It’s a fantastically rich, dark soy which tastes beautiful mixed through the noodles.

Char Siew Hor Fun, $4.80SGD

I don’t know if the Char Siew is on the menu at the original hawker stall, but I do recommend it for those who dine at the sit-down restaurant. While I think the char siew was better at Tasty BBQ in Bentleigh because of the sliver-thin slicing, the smokiness of this char siew was quite remarkable. Again, the soy sauce was fantastic mixed through the fresh slippery hor fun.

Soya Beansprouts, $3SGD

I find it difficult to have a meal without vegetables and so ordered the Soya Beansprouts. Very barely stir-fried, these beansprouts were still fresh and crunchy, enhanced by the crushed nuts on top. There’s no need to rely on heavy sauces in a dish like this when the produce is still so fresh and delightful eaten as is.

2 Combination Platter (Roasted Pork and Char Siew), $6SGD

Despite having already had about four meals each prior to arriving at the restaurant, I decided that our group of four needed one more dish in order to complete our meal. I ordered the Two Combination Platter with Roasted Pork and Char Siew – unfortunately they were out of the Pork Ribs (the fourth type of meat they serve), so I had to opt for a second serving of the char siew. Worth it!

There are some who will argue that visiting the new sit-down restaurant isn’t as authentic as lining up for hours at the hawker stall. In most instances, I would probably agree with that statement. However considering the general heat and humidity of Singapore, I really don’t mind the occasional interlude in an air-conditioned restaurant when it means you don’t have to queue and wait for as long!

Michelin-starred food at a bargain price. Surprisingly it’s not to everyone’s tastes – some German tourists sitting next to us actually ended up leaving the majority of their chicken on their plate when they left! I guess it really depends on your tastebuds and what you’re used to. For someone who’s grown up on this food though, Hawker Chan’s Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle not only tastes like the best of Singapore, but also like home.

The original Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle, is located in the Chinatown Complex Market & Food Centre in Singapore. Their first sit-down restaurant is located at 78 Smith Street in Singapore.

Finishing our long European honeymoon with a quick stopover in China to see the maternal side of my family only helped to emphasise how ridiculously lucky we were to take the trip and to have the opportunities that we had. It’s not just that a trip of this magnitude would be entirely unaffordable for most of my Chinese family members. It’s also the education and the worldliness that we had growing up in Australia that has contributed to us wanting to go overseas to explore different places.

My family members are all entirely content living where they live in China, and never venturing outside of the country. “You don’t have this ingredient in Australia do you,” is a frequent sentence uttered at my grandmother’s dining table as they take delight in serving up strange sea creatures up for dinner. The idea of having to travel overseas and only eating hamburgers and steaks is horrifying, because they simply don’t know that there’s anything else available.

They’ve never been taught about the nuanced differences between different “Western” countries, and so French, Polish, Greek and English cuisines all meld together as a homogeneous cuisine of hamburgers and steaks. Why go overseas for that when you can have fresh fish and clams for dinner every night? After all they believe that it’s not like there’s any other historical or cultural things of interest to be found in other countries, because China is the greatest country in the world with the best culture and history.

This insular world view is made all the more ironic by the fact that the village where my family live is now more developed than ever with a greater exposure to the Western world. I even saw Westerners on local business in the hotel we stayed in! I spent a lot of time reminiscing to K about how things used to be whenever I visited as a child, and how different it now is.

Where we once had to do our business in a chamberpot, now there’s indoor plumbing. Where my grandfather once toiled in the fields, now the fields have been turned into factories and tiny one-room homes for the migrant workers flocking to the area for factory work. Where we once had to take an overnight ferry to the area from Shanghai, now there’s a new bridge that cuts the travel time to two hours on a public bus.

Just the fact that there are now restaurants and street food stalls in the area highlight how things have changed. They never used to exist because everyone cooked at home – what was the point of going out to eat? It’s only with the growth of the migrant worker population (now outnumbering the ‘locals’) that cheap restaurants and street food stalls have opened up to cater to those who don’t have full kitchen facilities in their tiny one-room residences.

I guess it just goes to show that even as the country develops at a breakneck pace and the standard of living is raised in China, it will take much longer for people’s mentalities and worldviews change. It certainly doesn’t help when the local CCTV news station reports on news the way that they do. My relatives remarked to me at one point, “Oh, isn’t it lucky that China doesn’t have shootings the way America does? We’re so safe here.” Yes, if you ignore all the corruption, human trafficking, drugs and domestic violence statistics…

I love China, the food, and my family of course. But I can’t help but wish for them to have greater exposure to the world and different ways of thinking that aren’t dictated to them by the Communist Party.

Throughout my childhood years, my family had a ritual of eating dinner particularly early. Most days after I finished school and got home by 4pm, there would be just enough time for me to unpack my school bag, take an early shower and then sit down to a family dinner at 4.30pm. That was my parents’ way of ensuring that we all managed to spend half an hour together as a family before they opened up the takeaway shop at 5pm.

Over the years since my parents closed the shop, we’ve slowly begun to move to a later mealtime…though not always with success as my father will often have a hearty ‘pre-dinner’ meal around 4pm to get him through to a 7pm dinner. This habit of early eating does make things difficult sometimes, particularly when you show up to a restaurant at 5pm when the staff are still eating their own dinner! That was the case when we went to Fancy Oriental in Box Hill for a rather early dinner.

Luckily, the staff were nice enough to let us in and sit down to read the menu while they finished their own meals. It did mean that we were the first to order, and the first to get our food with the first dish landing on our table at just a quarter past five! Talk about an early dinner…

Dad ordered the Fried Glutinous Rice as a nice change from our usual steamed jasmine rice or Yangzhou fried rice. Absolutely delicious in its own right, and a dish I would order again. However, not a great dish to have with some of the other dishes we ordered as it was already so full of flavour that you really couldn’t use it as a base to soak up some of the other sauces.

I was a little horrified that Dad ordered the Sweet and Sour Pork. Along with dishes like lemon chicken and beef in black bean sauce, sweet and sour pork is the type of dish that K and I will often make fun of as the ‘typical’ Chinese Australian takeaway dish. This version however is an improvement on what you would normally find in a takeaway, with more of an emphasis on sour rather than sweet which means that every time you bite into a chunk of pineapple or capsicum, the sweetness really breaks through and highlights the dish.

I’m not sure what you would call this dish…perhaps Chinese Broccoli with Roasted Garlic and Goji Berries? The garlic is roasted first then cooked in the broth with the goji berries, with the tender young broccoli being added at the last minute. The result is a particularly rich roasted vegetarian dish that goes beyond the usual steamed or stir-fried greens.

I also don’t quite know how to translate the name of this dish – maybe something like Seafood Medley? Dad was the only person who really enjoyed this dish because of the heavy use of sea cucumber. Perfect for those who like it and the texture, but not so good for those who don’t. I did enjoy picking out the plump prawns, tender calamari, and juicy mushrooms though.

One of my highlights was the Salt and Pepper Tofu, a personal favourite that I do like to order when I’m out as it’s very difficult to recreate at home. The trick is to have a piping hot deep-fryer to get the perfect crispy shell on the tofu and unfortunately I can’t get my stove hot enough at home so my home-made versions normally go soggy! This however, was deliciously crisp with a soft tofu centre that melts in your mouth. With fresh herbs and crispy shallots on top, it’s a real winner.

Our last dish was a Beef Brisket Curry – a very different dish and not one you would normally find in a Chinese restaurant. The curry was very fragrant though and the brisket particularly succulent and tender. This is the type of dish where having plain steamed jasmine rice would have come in handy, to soak up all that delicious curry sauce.

Fancy Oriental is pretty good as far as Chinese restaurants go in Box Hill. Staff are friendly and accommodating (particularly given the early hour at which we dined!) and the food and service was prompt. The food is done well, and in some cases (the curry and the broccoli in particular), it’s done with a twist, a slice of innovation that distinguishes it from its neighbours.

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About Gourmanda

Melbournian feminist food fanatic. Fan of organisation and order, planning and purpose. Tinkers with words for a living. Married to K, High Expectations Asian Tiger Mother to Matilda and cat mama to Mr Darcy.